Richard K. Ransom, who built his local cheese and beef stick business, Hickory Farms, into a retail specialty-food powerhouse, had a leading role as Maumee’s Arrowhead Park grew, and received wide recognition for his philanthropy, died Monday in Parkcliffe Alzheimer’s Community. He was 96.
He had Alzheimer’s disease, his son, Robert, said.
When Mr. Ransom sold Hickory Farms in 1980, the business he’d started in 1959 had more than 450 franchised stores, 80 company-owned stores, and annual sales of more than $164 million.
He credited the firms’ steady but consistent growth through the 1960s with franchisees who displayed commitment, a quality he demanded.
“We tell them, ‘If you’re going to be an absentee manager and just fool around, we don’t need you, pal,’” Mr. Ransom told The Blade in 1971. He was particular about how stores were run, even to the proper way to offer customers samples and to slice cheese or Hickory Farms’ signature beef sausage stick.
“He had good ideas, and he was able to follow through,” his son said. “A lot of people say, ‘Oh, I could do this or do that,’ but don’t do it. He was a bulldog. He got good people to work for him, and he took care of them.”
And he was decisive, said Richard Anderson, chairman emeritus of The Andersons and a longtime friend.
“He knew what he wanted in business and made it work,” Mr. Anderson said. “He had really good basic values — honesty, integrity. He could relate to people and could make great friends that would last.”
Mr. Ransom was among a group of friends in the early 1980s who formed Tomahawk Development Co., the growth of which is often linked to the success of the business and office community in Maumee, Arrowhead Park. He also started a family company that owns commercial properties in the Toledo area.
Mr. Ransom was a director of banks and businesses and served on civic and charitable boards, from the Toledo Zoo to the former Riverside Hospital. He was the first board chairman of St. John’s Jesuit High School.
He long invested in causes that help children. Hickory Farms raised money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association of America and had a role in its annual Labor Day telethon. Mr. Ransom and his family supported Foster Parent International. In 1983, he founded Adopt America Network, as it is now called, to find permanent families and homes for children in foster care.
He was on the organization’s board and organized an annual fund-raising dinner and auction — and he liked to meet with families and take them to dinner.
In interviews, he traced his commitment to the suffering he saw among the children of Okinawa when he was a World War II soldier.
“He clearly made a difference in the lives of thousands and thousands of children,” said Wendy Spoerl, president of Adopt America Network.
He also was a longtime benefactor to Assistance Dogs of America.
Mr. Ransom was a local winner of the Jefferson Award for Public Service in 2004. The local chapter of the National Society of Fund Raising Executive named him “outstanding philanthropist for 1996.”
Born Sept. 13, 1919, to Beatrice and Chick Ransom, he was a 1938 graduate of DeVilbiss High School and worked for the family produce business. He liked to fish and was a hunter of game, big and small, around the world.
He was a member of Christ Presbyterian Church.
His wife of 63 years, the former Elizabeth “Betty” Meinert, died March 14, 2009.
Surviving are his daughters, Carol Batdorf, Lynn Connolly, and Janet Sarieh; son, Robert; nine grandchildren, and 12 great-grandchildren.
Visitation will be from 4-9 p.m. Friday in the Reeb Funeral Home, Sylvania, where services will be at 11 a.m. Saturday. The family suggests tributes to Adopt America Network.
Contact Mark Zaborney at: mzaborney@theblade.com or 419-724-6182.
First Published April 13, 2016, 4:00 a.m.